State Key Laboratory of Coal Resources and Safe Mining,

China University of Mining Technology, Beijing 100083, China

In a variety of engineering applications, such as petroleum, mining, hydrogeology, geophysics, and contaminant cleanup, porous rock is the main concerned material which involves a large number of discontinuous, multiscale, and geometry- irregular pores. These pores significantly affect the physical and mechanical properties of rock. Accurate prediction of the physical and mechanical properties of porous rock and the influences of pore structures has become a great concern to scientists and engineers. Numerical reconstruction modelling could provide an effective and economical way to characterize the mechanical and physical properties of porous rock. In this presentation, we present a novel method for reconstructing the well-connected porous structure of sandstones, which are often intractable to handle for current reconstruction methods. A fractal descriptor is proposed for better characterizing complex pore morphologies. The reconstruction procedure of a 3D well-connected porous structure is optimized by integrating the improved simulated annealing algorithm and the fractal system control function. The proposed reconstruction method enables us to represent a large-size 3D porous structure. To verify the accuracy of reconstruction, we have analyzed the geometrical, topological, and mechanical properties of the reconstructed porous medium and compared them with those of prototype rock samples by means of finite element modelling and laboratory experiments. Comparison indicates that there is good comparability in the geometrical, topological, statistical and mechanical properties of pore structures between the reconstructed and the reference systems of rock. The mechanisms of pore deformation and failure that govern the macroscopic properties, such as strength, fracture, and energy dissipation, of porous rocks subjected to static and dynamic loads are analyzed.

Time: February 28th (Friday) at 10:00-11:30 a.m.

Location: Room 412,North Building Meng Minwei of Tsinghua University science and Technology Building